Learn how to play the popular Borderlands 3 esport: Djira Ball! DJIRA BALL a hilarious introduction to a super serious esport: What is Djira Ball? Djira Ball is an esport within Borderlands 3 made by myself and CZ47. It consists of throwing a Fastball grenade at a Djira (the small Nekrotafeyo creatures) that has been launched into the air by a melee attack. If the Fastball is thrown just right, the Djira will get launched away from you, potentially at a very high velocity. In this way, a launched Djira could be seen as a sportsball. This interaction between an airborne Djira and a fast moving projectile was discovered when I was testing how damage affects an airborne Djira. When testing grenade damage by throwing a Fastball, a Djira randomly got yeeted. CZ47 jokingly proposed making a sport out of it. I took it seriously. We collaborated on the parameters of said sport, and CZ47 made the arena for it with hotfix modding. It takes place in the Guardian Takedown. Find the Djira Ball hotfix mod on the Modding page How to Play Djira Ball: Unspec all skill points, remove all gear, do not select an action skill or a pet. Perhaps make a separate save file for playing Djira Ball. Minos Prime’s drop pod is now located above Anathema’s arena, which is now the Djira Ball arena. At the drop pod, buy a Fastball from the ammo vendor and a Toboggan at the shield vendor. If the Toboggan has a movement speed passive, save/quit and try again. If you need money to buy these, open the white chests at and above the vending machines for gear to sell. (Designer’s Cut DLC is required for the Toboggan, lest you be at a movement speed disadvantage. Snowdrifts are not allowed, because the snowball itself will send Djira into the air in an unpredictable manner.) At the staging area above the arena, the teams decide which goal to defend: red plants or blue statues. All players drop down into the arena at once, and play begins immediately. Turn on the “Minimap Legendaries” option under Options > Gameplay. When a Djira is scored and dies outside the arena, it spawns a single legendary. The amount of legendaries on the minimap outside each goal counts as the scoreboard. The first team to score 5 Djira on their opponents wins. Own-goals count against you. The “scoreboard” settles all disputes. Djira can get stuck in walls and on various platforms outside the arena. Play continues until there are zero Djira in the arena and in play. If that occurs, take note of the current score, travel out to Sanctuary and back to Minos Prime and resume the game at the previous score with fresh Djira.

Tips for conquering the Maliwan Takedown as Amara. Maliwan Takedown THE WALL Clearing the enemies on the turrets opens the gate, and Death Spheres spawn in the Ratch area. If you ignore the Death Spheres and continue on, they can later on park above the wall and shoot at you from afar. Most builds can deal with this, but some more fragile builds may need to take the time to kill the Death Spheres before moving on. HIGH PRIORITY ENEMIES 1. Jetpack Troopers can snipe your health away very quickly. If you have a red laser trained on you, that's a Jetpack Trooper about to attack, and you either need to break line of sight, stun them out of the air, or kill them quickly. 2. Badass Troopers if left alone will consistently down you with their powerful, fast firing guns. Badass Wardogs are the same. 3. Shock Heavies can instantly down a Deathless build, or render an Infernal Wish shield useless. Hackhounds are a similar type of threat, though they can't actually do any health damage. VALKYRIES Each Valkyrie does have a crit spot, even if it is hard to hit. Sigrdrifa's is on her waist, the narrowest part of her model. Sometimes it is more reliably hit when shot a little off-center. Hildr's is right in the middle of her chest, the easiest one to hit. Rota has the same crit spot as Sigrdrifa, but also a slightly larger area on her lower back, where it is colored black. When Rota drops down and is crouched while spawning the cryo drones, that is a perfect opportunity to loop around to her back and deal lots of damage. DEATH SPHERES Sometimes, when stunned, Death Spheres will unleash a continuous laser attack and move around erratically. It is nearly impossible to dodge, and the Death Sphere is nearly impossible to hit. This most often happens when they are stunned with a Face Puncher. If you have an attack that stuns the Spheres, make sure you can finish them off quickly, or you risk this attack. IMMUNE MALIWAN HEAVIES If your attacks are mostly mono-elemental, you will likely run into heavies that are immune to that element, especially as Amara with her elemental attunement. There are a few ways of dealing with them. 1. The most obvious is to quickly change your action skill element, and then change it back once the heavy is dead. However, this is tedious, and sometimes not possible when there's lots of other dangerous enemies around (like the bridge) and you've chosen your particular elemental attunement for a reason. 2. If you have strong bonus elements, those can sometimes be enough to deal with the heavy. Notable examples are Urad and Re-Volter bonus elements, or ASE 50% bonus element anointments on your grenade and shield. You won't lifesteal with Sustainment off of these bonus elements, though; if a heavy is immune to your main attack element, you may need to briefly Sustain on a different nearby mob before finishing off the immune heavy. 3. A strong radiation attack, such as a radiation Fish Slap, is often useful for dealing with immune heavies, since there are no radiation immune heavies in the Maliwan Takedown. 4. You can deal your damage to other enemies, then kill the immune heavy with Groundbreaker. This may not be simple if your method of dealing Groundbreaker damage is also elemental, such as punching when specced into Illuminated Fist, or slamming when wearing a slam artifact. If one of those attacks is elemental, make sure the other one isn't, so you don't run into problems delivering Groundbreaker. WOTAN The quicker you can damage Wotan to his next immune phase, the smoother the fight will be. If he's able to stay in a certain phase long enough, he will spawn more and more adds, and the fight will eventually become overwhelming. Wotan resists cryo, so unless you're Moze and specced Superior Firepower, it is the worst element to use on him. Corrosive is the best element. If you have little to no elemental damage increases, then kinetic/non-elemental is second best, as it does 80% damage vs armor. Shock would be third, at 65%, unless you have enough elemental damage increases to put it over the 80% of kinetic. Note that the "Better Half" or flying half, after the split, is not cryo-resistant, and can even be frozen and dropped to the ground. The Better Half is also the only half that spawns adds , which may be necessary for a second wind. It does have a dangerous attack, though, so it's always a game time decision whether you take it out before or after the bottom half. You can get one second wind by shooting the glass around the brain on Wotan's bottom half. The glass is a separate entity, and it counts as a kill when it "breaks". The bottom half of Wotan is particularly vulnerable to a strong Phaseslam or Tandava attack. This is for two reasons. 1. The glass can be killed, spawning a Remnant orb inside the brain case, which then quickly makes contact inside Wotan's hitbox and finishes him off. 2. There are multiple hitboxes in Wotan's bottom half, one for Wotan himself, and one for each leg, even while the bottom half is still alive. You can see this in the following screenshot: This is a single Tandava casted at Wotan's bottom half. You can see four separate instances of damage at the top, one for each leg, and there's another obscured one in the middle at the bottom. I believe this has to do with the ability of Tandava and Phaseslam to sort of "go through walls". They can penetrate some hitboxes, and it looks like that allows them to hit every part of Wotan, effectively quintupling your damage.

About Stone_Swan, creator of countless off-meta Amara builds. About Hi! I'm Stone Swan. I'm an Amara build crafter, making builds since around February 2020. I was originally inspired by Moxsy, and tried to differentiate myself by making off-meta builds. I made a green and blue tree gun build . I made the first Amara slam build with the Spark Plug. I had the goal of making true melee viable in Mayhem 4, which back then was the highest difficulty. I accomplished that goal within a couple months with the original Black Swan build , and thought I was done. Mayhem 2.0 rolled around, and I couldn't make anything off-meta work until Gearbox did a couple major balance changes and introduced mayhem scaling. Soon, the builds started flowing again. A generalist gun/melee/action skill build . A Downfall build that was later converted to Phaseslam and Phasecast to participate in the two End Game Rush community challenges (and got 2nd place for the second EGR ). Old builds were updated, purple tree builds were made , Nimbus was used somewhat successfully . I discovered how the Ice Spiker artifact was tied to Amara's action skills and made my second slam build type . Making full-length build videos was fun and very rewarding, but I continued to have less and less time to dedicate to them. I decided to go out with a bang and put out 9 builds at the same time, covering three of them in depth in my Whiteness of Swans video. That was the end of my YouTube builds, but not the end of build making in general; DLC 6 and level 72 were yet to come. I continued making builds but not making videos for them, only showing them on stream. I made more true melee builds. I got Amara to deal damage over time (dots) from guns (NOT Unleash the Dragon) on a level that erases raid bosses extremely quickly. I discovered that the Victory Rush artifact wasn't working properly, and the community responded loudly enough that Gearbox fixed it. I figured out the radsplosion damage formula , and made countless other small discoveries. I made grenade builds , more slam build types , a Hellfire build , builds using nearly every legendary class mod, and even a couple purple ones. A sniper build. A launcher build. Even builds where you can shoot the Guardian Angel effectively. You name it, I've probably tried it. I accomplished my final goal: a true melee Amara that can punch to death True Guardian Takedown enemies without overly relying on action skill damage (Phaseflare, Ties That Bind) or Unleash The Dragon or other forms of melee damage, while also using tropes from the Mayhem 3 days: Phaseslam, Blitz, Brawler Ward shield. Once that was done, I knew it was time to make this site and share everything. Since this site's launch, I've figured out how Zane's Our Man Flynt skill actually works , eventually leading it to be one of the strongest skills in the entire game . More builds have been added to the site, starting with the resurrection of the White Elephant on true melee builds , making true melee capable of raid bossing . I performed the first Graveward one-punch and the first Mayhem 11 boss kill with the Binary Operator . Shoutout to my friends, acquaintances, and inspirations along my build-making journey, in no particular order: Moxsy, CZ47, MadGlenny, lesshandsomejack, tbj_quag, soccerchickTV, LazyData, SomeOldGuyInHawaii, Skkra, Ancient_Rune, xEternalDragonx, Lonemasterino, nino_salvaje, Oh yes 10 FPS, and I'm sure many more I'm forgetting... Much love, Stone_Swan

Simply a grenade build for Amara. No, not the Fish Slap - actual grenades. Phase Yeet SYNOPSIS Simply a grenade build for Amara. No, not the Fish Slap - actual grenades. INTRO Amara can be very effective with grenades, although to reach her peak with them, she requires quite specific gear. And to put together this loadout correctly, you really need to understand the theory behind all of it. This build is quite far off-meta, which appeals to me, and has the ability to delete both mobs and bosses. It has an unconventional skill spec and even the ability to use a purple class mod you don't remember the name of. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Probably the most alarming thing here is Catharsis. This is covered in the "Notes - Catharsis" section. Personal Space is specced simply for more damage in FFYL. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. You can also use Tandava—I just had too many Phasecast builds at the time of making this one so I decided to focus on Ties. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Most of the time fire. This is related to Catharsis. But switch to shock against Guardians in the Guardian Takedown, and element-match any boss's HP bar. MAIN GUNS Guardian Angel, with Urad anointment. The radsplosions created by Urad will help greatly with area clear. Ties That Bind does not transfer grenade damage, so you have to use some work-arounds. Radsplosions is one of them. UTILITY GUN Face Puncher, with Urad anointment, for delivering Groundbreaker from a distance and stunning enemies. FFYL GUN Free Radical or Plasma Coil or Backburner, with Urad anointment. CLASS MOD Phasezerker or Master (purple class mod) with points into Catharsis. Did you remember the Master com? It legitimately has a use-case here. See the "Notes - Catharsis" section below. Anima points are recommended for the Phasezerker, because there is some dot tech incorporated into this build. Passives on your class mod and artifact are where the specifics really hit hard with this build. The most important are both a grenade damage and a splash damage radius passive on your class mod, the former being more important. Other passives: action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, grenade radius. Even shield capacity or recharge rate can help your shield survivability a little bit. There's a third Class Mod option, but it's mostly just used for raid boss kills: the Spiritual Driver. See the "Notes - Spiritual Driver Loadout" section below. SHIELD Re-Volter, with Action Skill Start anointment. Since this is a Deathless build, the parts on the Re-Volter are fairly important. For survivability, Turtle parts are best, then Absorb, then Adaptive. For utility, Vagabond is pretty nice. With Urad and now the Re-Volter, you have lots of bonus elements for your grenades. ARTIFACT Atom Balm Deathless. Atom Balm buffing the radsplosion damage and radius is very important for mobbing. Just like with the class mod, passives are very important here, with Grenade Damage being top priority and Area of Effect in the 2nd or 3rd slot right behind it. Other good passives: action skill cooldown rate, elemental damage, or even a shield survivability passive like extra capacity or recharge rate. To better take advantage of Unweave the Rainbow you can sub the Atom Balm for an Ice Breaker Deathless. Look out for the same passives, but also include a Cryo Efficiency passive in that list. GRENADE Finally, the meat & potatoes of the build. There are several options here, and also some restrictions. Options: Ghast Call (Roided preferred), Fastball, Lightspeed, triple Sticky purple Hyperion grenade ("Fixative Longbow"), Porcelain Pipe Bomb, Recurring Hex, Whispering Ice, Doc Hina's Miracle Bomb, Core Buster. Restrictions: all of these require the ASE 50% Corrosive Damage anointment, excepting the Ghast Call, which cannot come anointed. Further, if any of the above grenades can come in cryo, you must choose cryo. Last, if you're using the Doc Hina's Miracle Bomb, change your action skill element to cryo. The reasoning for these restrictions is explained in the "Notes" sections below. Your heavy duty bossing grenades are mostly going to be the Ghast Call and the Fixative Longbow, but depending on the boss the Lightspeed and Miracle Bomb can also do some work. GAMEPLAY LOOP Have your action skill element set to fire, equip your cryo grenade with the corrosive anointment, and you're all set. Grasp enemies and throw your grenade at them or a linked enemy. Use your grasp as often as possible, as soon as it becomes available. Grenade damage cannot pass through Ties That Bind, but the ASE 50% corrosive damage can. So if you have that anointment activated from your previous grasp, you can send that damage through Ties That Bind. This, along with radsplosions, is another work-around for area clear. If your cryo grenade freezes an enemy, it will get a significant damage boost from Unweave The Rainbow. Get really good at avoiding damage and you can loop your action skill pretty quickly, which will build up stacks of Violent Tapestry, leading to more freezings with your cryo grenades, leading to more Unweave the Rainbow damage and even faster cooldowns (because kills with UTR damage will also proc Expedite). This build can get some pretty significant momentum. Note that when using the Lightspeed, it is very strong when you throw it at the ground directly in front of an enemy, so that the child projectiles split and bounce into them. Thus, when grasping and using the Lightspeed, try to aim for an enemy on the ground instead of the grasped one in the air. NOTES - MAYHEM 10/11 This build requires you to play on Mayhem 10 with the More Than Okay Boomer easy modifier, so you don't run out of grenades. Other non-impactful modifiers you can use along with it are Healy Avenger, Drone Ranger, and Not The Face. NOTES - GRENADE DOTS The reason you select a cryo grenade, where possible, beyond Unweave The Rainbow, is because they can apply good dots for mobbing. Something to know about dots in this game is that you can only have one dot per element per form of attack. So if you have, say, a corrosive grenade with an ASE 50% corrosive bonus element, you can't get two separate corrosive dots. You only get one. So to apply more dot damage, you need to differentiate your elements. Your cryo grenade does not play by the rules in two ways in relation to dots. First, elemental grenades that list a damage over time will do that same damage over time with any bonus element. For example, if a radiation grenade lists 600 radiation damage per second as a dot value on the card, it will deal that damage when the dot procs. Everything normal so far. If that grenade has an ASE 50% corrosive bonus element anoint, and that anoint is active and applies a dot, it will also deal 600 corrosive damage per second (we're ignoring elemental multipliers here). In other words, it deals the same damage as listed on the radiation grenade's card, not 50% less... If you have Forceful Expression and your action skill element set to fire, that grenade will also deal 600 fire damage per second from a dot, not 18% of 600. If Re-Volter procs and dots, the grenade will deal 600 shock damage per second, not 1200 per second. As you can see, the strength of bonus element dots, when applied by grenades, are always the same value: 100% of the card value. You come out ahead here: Re-Volter loses 100%, but your ASE gains 50% and Forceful Expression gains 82%. (Urad is 100% regardless.) The above example illustrates why you have your action skill element set to fire and use a corrosive ASE. With Re-Volter and the Urad anointment, you've covered all elements that can dot, maximizing your dot damage. The second way your cryo grenade breaks the rules is because for grenades, cryo efficiency is not tied to the dot damage displayed on the other elements. For guns, on the other hand, cryo efficiency and dot damage are related. Example, if a fire gun does 1000 damage per shot and deals 1500 damage per second when a dot procs, a cryo version of that same gun will have 150% cryo efficiency. Cryo efficiency is the ratio of dot damage to card damage. However, with many cryo grenades, their efficiency is much, much higher than the ratio of dot damage to card damage in other elements of that grenade. Example: a fire grenade might do 1000 card damage and list 200 damage per second as the dot. But the cryo version of that grenade will not have a cryo efficiency of 20%; it could be something like 60%. Thus, when you apply a bonus element dot with a cryo grenade, the dot will be much stronger, especially since all bonus elements proc at 100% of listed dot damage as explained above. In summary, having a cryo grenade and having your bonus elements differentiated results in the highest possible dot damage from throwing grenades. There is also the added benefit of getting maximum debuff damage from the Guardian Rank perk Harmageddon. NOTES - CATHARSIS In this build you are encouraged to have all 5 status effects applied: cryo from the grenade, corrosive from the grenade anoint, fire from your action skill element (Forceful Expression), shock from the Re-Volter, and Urad from your gun anointment. Catharsis creates an explosion upon enemy death for each status effect applied to that enemy, and will proc up to 5 explosions in all of the elements. These explosions, with Guardian Angel and action skill damage and an extra 3 points from the Master class mod, can deal 40-80 million damage in total, with an average amount of Do Harm stacks. If these explosions kill anything, they will proc Expedite. This is why the Master class mod is viable here - it's the only class mod that can roll Catharsis. Catharsis can deal self-damage, but on a grenade build you do not want to be near your target anyway. Along with radsplosions and your ASE corrosive anointment, this is the third work-around for area clear since grenade damage does not pass through Ties That Bind. NOTES - SPIRITUAL DRIVER LOADOUT For bossing or raid bossing, you can use a Spiritual Driver combined with an Elemental Projector Victory Rush for big damage. However, it's not as straightforward as equipping those two things. The challenge you need to overcome is the fact that the Driver's self-dot is your own damage, and is boosted by the Elemental Projector. Further, when holding the Guardian Angel, all self damage is multiplied by 5. So if you use this loadout you will probably kill yourself before you kill anything else, unless you build some survivability into it as well. The first thing you need is a Re-Volter with adaptive parts. The second thing you need is the Terror Health Regen anointment on your Guardian Angel. This also means you need a way to apply terror. If you don't want to sacrifice the Action Skill Start anointment on your Re-Volter, you can put ASE Apply Terror on your grenade. However, I would recommend you put Terror Dmg/Fire Rate on your grenade and put Melee Apply Terror on your Face Puncher and swap to apply terror at the same time you swap to shoot for Groundbreaker. Alternatively, you can sacrifice the ASS anoint on your Re-Volter and put ASE Apply Terror on it. Then, you can let the Re-Volter naturally break, which can happen very easily in some boss fights. Every time you kill an add, it will begin filling via the Guardian Rank perk Shield Reboot, and then re-break from your own self-dot damage, re-triggering the effect. If you just want to, for example, drop down and one-shot Seer with a Fixative Longbow, you don't need to worry about survivability, and can use the loadout shown in the gameplay video at the top of the page.

A launcher-only Amara build. Hard to play, but very rewarding. Beeg Badaboom SYNOPSIS A launcher-only Amara build. Hard to play, but very rewarding. INTRO If you can master the technique of this build, it will make nearly any launcher strong. That's the goal of it, at least. It involves moving at high speeds while shooting, and that often means you're going to down yourself. This build takes a while to learn, and is one of the higher-skill-required builds on this site. But it makes beeg badabooms. This is the second build name that references the Fifth Element. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Samsara is your healing. There is some action skill damage specced because sometimes Tandava will kill weaker enemies, giving you Expedite procs along with Remnant doing its thing. You can move points from Do Harm to Violent Tapestry to instead proc Unweave The Rainbow and Free The Soul more often. You can also move points from red tree and Wrath in order to spec some Mindfulness points, if you can't get many from your class mod. Burn Both Ends can be self-stacked by the Spiritual Driver self-dot and an active bonus element (on shield and grenade). Normally, self damage does not stack Burn Both Ends, but a bonus element "ticking on top of" a self-dot will. ACTION SKILL Tandava, always. The main purpose is to have an action skill that can hit multiple enemies to get stacks of Samsara. And also for your action skill to end immediately so that your anointments kick in. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Corrosive, always. This is one of those builds where changing your action skill element does not change anything significant, damage-wise. Corrosive is picked because it is the longest dot, giving you longer uptime on both Mindfulness and Burn Both Ends stacks. GUNS Here's the fun list: Hive, R.Y.N.A.H., Lump, Scourge, Mongol, Globetrottr, Plaguebearer, Backburner, Kick Charger, Yellowcake, Major Kong. All with ASE 125% Splash anointment. If any of these have variants with more projectiles, choose the version with the fewest projectiles. Some of these have more mobbing and area clear capabilities, and some are more single target. Some have a charge time where you need to hold down the trigger, some have a charge time where you only press the trigger once, some don't charge at all. Some are element locked. Some are stronger than others. You'll have to figure out which guns work best for which activities. FFYL GUN Free Radical or Plasma Coil, with Urad anointment. Launchers can get you up from FFYL, but ammo is precious considering it's your main weapon type. And they can lose a lot of power if the first shot doesn't get you back up and you don't have Overkill anymore. CLASS MOD Spiritual Driver, with as many points into Mindfulness as possible. This class mod requires you to move quickly to get more damage, whether it's sliding or just running and jumping. Recommended passives: splash damage radius, splash damage, action skill cooldown rate, heavy damage, action skill damage, mag size, weapon charge speed, weapon damage, weapon critical damage. Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time. SHIELD Infernal Wish, with ASE 50% bonus element anointment (radiation is recommended). The Wish stacks will eventually get to you and down you, but going down is something you should get used to on this build. ARTIFACT Toboggan. Not only will sliding grant you 100% bonus amp damage, but it will also greatly increase your movement speed for more Spiritual Driver damage. Sliding and shooting is how you get maximum damage out of this build. Recommended passives: heavy damage, elemental damage, action skill cooldown rate, area of effect damage, mag size. BACKUP ARTIFACT Cutpurse Launch Pad. You will most likely run out of ammo during long activities, even when using efficient launchers such as the Yellowcake and the Kickcharger. This artifact will replenish your rocket ammo when slamming. GRENADE Hyperion Quasar (non sticky) or Mesmer, with ASE 50% bonus element anointment. Either of these are great for aggro relief, which can be necessary because this build does not have direct life steal. GAMEPLAY LOOP Cast Tandava toward a group of enemies for as many Samsara stacks as possible. Your Driver dot will be ramping up Mindfulness and Burn Both Ends. You can either slide and cancel for Toboggan amp or simply shoot during the slide. Either way, you must slide before each shot. Whether you shoot while sliding or shoot while running is up to you, your gun, and your content. If you can't aim quick enough to shoot while sliding, then don't (although some launchers don't really need to be aimed all that well). If your gun has a charge time, that can make sliding and shooting tougher to execute -- make sure you begin the charge at the same moment you begin the slide. And if the terrain you are in doesn't allow for clear sliding lanes and shooting your launcher away from your face, then don't shoot while sliding. But sliding and shooting is how you attain maximum damage, and should at least be performed in boss arenas. Maintaining your Overkill is an important part of doing damage, and being forced to slide and get up to speed before each shot helps you keep that Overkill. This is because during the time it takes to set up the next shot, the previous shot should have killed something. If you shoot twice in rapid succession, and your first shot had Overkill, your second shot will be significantly weaker. Taking advantage of Overkill also helps make your ammo last longer. NOTES - GUARDIAN TAKEDOWN CRYSTALS This is probably the toughest challenge for this build, because there's no room to move fast and shoot. Additionally, sliding for Toboggan lets some of the enemies close in on you. Use the Mesmer, have a Kickcharger equipped, and stay in the air. Manage your Overkill , and if you can quickly slide and cancel for amp between shots, do so.

A fire-themed Hot Drop slam build. Magmamara SYNOPSIS A fire-themed Hot Drop slam build. INTRO The Hot Drop slam artifact is fairly strong, especially when built around and using Amara's Clear The Mind capstone. This build is purposefully thematic, because just a few changes would make it overshadowed by action skill damage, and leave few enemies left for actually slamming with the Hot Drop. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES There's lots of action skill damage to help supplement the Hot Drop. There's also some cryo synergies taken in the purple tree, despite this being a fire build, and that's because Terror Cryo is a recommended anoint. ACTION SKILL Phaseslam, because this is a thematic build and it's also a type of slam. You can choose something like Tandava or one of the Phaseflare variants if you like. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Fire. Choosing cryo would almost be too powerful, setting off Free The Soul and Unweave The Rainbow constantly, leaving little room for actual damage from the Hot Drop. MAIN GUN Guardian Angels, with Terror Cryo and Urad anointments. This build can use either anointment, and has slightly different setups for each. FLYING ENEMY / FFYL GUN Face Punchers, with Terror Cryo and Urad anointments. With Body & Mind active, this is a pretty good weapon for taking out flying enemies that the Hot Drop can't reach, as well as getting you up from FFYL. BACKUP FFYL GUN Ember's Purge, with Terror Cryo and Urad anointments. Shoot enemies with this gun and the puddle that spawns below them will be strong enough to get you a Second Wind. It can't do anything against flying enemies, but it is very much in theme with the build. CLASS MOD Stone, with points into Awakening being the most important. Awakening will boost the effectiveness of the Stone's damage reduction, as well as the effectiveness of both Do Harm and Violent Tapestry, two very important skills for this build. The most important passive you need on it is Splash Damage Radius, so your Hot Drop can hit enemies in a wider area. Other recommended passives: splash damage, action skill cooldown rate, action skill damage. SHIELD If using the Urad anointment, then Beskar with a Reflect part, with ASE Apply Terror anointment. See "Notes - Beskar" section below. If using the Terror Cryo anointment, there are a few thematic options: Torch, Nova Berner, Void Rift. A Re-Volter is strictly going to be the most damage, of course, but not very thematic. Each of these shields has effects on shield break, so you can choose to run either the Action Skill Start anointment on them, or let them break naturally (more fun) and choose the ASE Apply Terror anointment. ARTIFACT If using the Urad anointment, then Hot Drop Deathless. If using the Terror Cryo anointment, then Hot Drop with one of a few suffix options: Victory Rush, Otto Idol, Cosmic Crater, Pull Out Method. All of those are pretty self explanatory and you can choose whichever one suits you. The Pull Out Method is more for show; the singularity is very weak. But it can briefly stagger some enemies and throw a bunch of debris around, which pairs well with the Void Rift shield. The most important passive to have on your Hot Drop is Area of Effect in the 2nd or 3rd slot, which will also increase area radius. Other recommended passives: action skill cooldown rate, movement speed, incendiary damage. GRENADE Doc Hina's Miracle Bomb, with either Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment (if using ASE Apply Terror on shield) or ASE Apply Terror (if using Action Skill Start on shield). Very thematic, and also very strong. You can melt enemies with this grenade alone, which a good way to eliminate far away enemies while you're occupied with Hot Dropping on enemies nearby. GAMEPLAY LOOP Simply start Phaseslamming and Hot Dropping. Pull out the Face Puncher briefly to take out flying enemies or anything else that annoys you at a distance. NOTES - BESKAR The reflect ability on legendary shields still lets you take damage when a projectile is reflected. The Reflect part that appears on purple shields and some legendaries negates damage when the reflect chance rolls. When the Beskar rolls with a Reflect part, and you enter FFYL once and get a second wind, the Beskar's legendary reflect ability "breaks" and it takes on the properties of the Reflect part. Because the Beskar has a 100% reflect chance, after that point, it will reflect 100% of projectiles without letting them damage you. This does not negate all damage, however; indirect splash can still damage you, and if a projectile dots you, you will take that dot damage. NOTES - GUARDIAN TAKEDOWN Unfortunately, this build does not work at all in the low gravity of the Guardian Takedown. The Hot Drop projectiles time out and disappear before they can hit the ground. NOTES - GROUNDBREAKER Despite this build being themed around the Hot Drop, it can appear that Phaseslam and your other attacks are carrying the damage, and actual ground slamming is only killing things with Groundbreaker. But you can actually turn Groundbreaker off for this build, and still clear content very effectively. NOTES - MAYHEM 10/11 For most slam and true melee builds, Mayhem 10 is recommended with the Speed Demon modifier, to help you close the distance and get to your next enemy before the enemy downs you. Other benign modifiers for this build: Medium - Healy Avenger, Hard - Drone Ranger, and Very Hard - Not The Face. You can certainly play on Mayhem 11, but you will more often go down by way of distant enemies shooting at you. It's fine; there's good FFYL options in the form of the Face Puncher and Ember's Purge.

A very strong true melee-focused build that can blitz through any content, if you know what you're doing. Ruby Swan SYNOPSIS A very strong true melee-focused build that can blitz through any content, if you know what you're doing. INTRO Ruby Swan is one of my three crown jewels of true melee builds, along with Sapphire Swan and Emerald Swan. Ruby Swan is designated as such because it uses a red tree action skill, Ties That Bind. But it's not as simple as that. This build probably goes the deepest into the theory crafting rabbit hole, pulls out some tricks I KNOW you don't know, and comes back with tons of power and highlight reel potential. It can even use some guns quite effectively, allowing for a wild run & gun & punch experience. Highly, highly recommended. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES If you want to focus more on guns, move three points from Clarity to Personal Space. Two of the traditionally only gun-focused skills, Indiscriminate and Transcend, actually come into play while punching. Find out why in the "Notes" sections at the end. Burn Both Ends will be self-stacked via our class mod and a bonus element. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever element you want the element of your punch to be, which should be suited to the content you're facing. Except Cryo. This build uses the Spiritual Driver class mod, so selecting cryo will make you slow yourself. PUNCHING GUN 1 The Psycho Stabber, with a Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. The general purpose puncher; use this against beefy isolated targets or if you feel patient enough to punch a boss rather than taking the easy way out and throwing a fish. PUNCHING GUN 2 Unforgiven, with a Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment, preferably with high crit damage on the card and a melee attachment. See "Notes - Unforgiven" below. PUNCHING GUN 3 Ionic Disruptor, with a Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. See "Notes - Ionic Disruptor" below. PUNCHING GUN 4 Guardian Angel, with a Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. See "Notes - Guardian Angel" below. SHOOTING GUNS While this build can use guns in conjunction with punching, you need to stick with strong guns: Hellwalker, Beacon, Free Radical, Kickcharger. All with the same Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. BACKUP GUN Face Puncher, preferably with x14 pellets, with the Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. This is to help take down bosses and flying enemies and anything that annoys you from a distance. CLASS MOD Spiritual Driver, with 3 points into Mindfulness for the movement speed that every true melee build requires. Recommended passives: melee damage, action skill damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, splash damage radius. Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time. SHIELD Brawler Ward with 300% melee damage, preferably low level but not required, with the ASE Apply Terror anointment. If this shield isn't broken immediately by the Driver dot, enemies will take care of it for you. ARTIFACT Elemental Projector Static Charge. The Driver plus Elemental Projector will give you heaps of elemental damage, greatly helping the strength of your punches. The most important passive is Area of Effect in the 2nd or 3rd slot, which will also increase area damage radius. Other recommended passives: melee damage, action skill cooldown rate, movement speed, elemental damage. GRENADE Fish Slap with an ASE 50% bonus element. Match your Fish Slap element and the bonus element to the content you're facing. This will require carrying multiple Fish Slaps. Throw this grenade for easy bossing, or to get rid of pesky mobs from a distance, or to deal with immune heavies in the Maliwan Takedown without switching your action skill element. GAMEPLAY LOOP Assuming you're just holding the Psychostabber, the thought process is very simple: grasp enemy, punch enemy. You have 234% increased elemental damage from your gear and skill tree. The Static Charge chains will double dip that damage, because they're based on the strength of your melee hit and then get their own damage formula, including elemental damage. A Static Charge chain was used to one-tap Seer in the gameplay video above. Not only will the Static Charge kill nearby mobs for you, it will also give you lots of Groundbreaker for your next punch while doing so. Your ASE 50% bonus element on your Fish Slap will get added on top of your Groundbreaker damage. This build is extremely efficient when mobbing, even in True Guardian Takedown. If you can't get ahold of a flying enemy with Ties That Bind, shoot 'em down with the Face Puncher. Hold the Psycho Stabber or Guardian Angel and throw Fish for bosses. If you're shooting guns, make sure your gun element matches your action skill element. This means no cryo or radiation guns. NOTES - UNFORGIVEN This is where the rabbit hole begins. Buckle up. You can punch with the Unforgiven for its ridiculous crit multiplier. "Melee can't crit in this game, though", you say. While this is true, melee-adjacent things can. In the "Gameplay Loop" section above, I talked about the strength of Static Charge chains. These chains can also crit and, when they do, they'll be buffed by the Unforgiven and Transcend in the blue skill tree. Static Charge chains basically aim for center-of-mass, so they rarely crit against humanoid enemies. However, the creatures in the Guardian Takedown have mostly forward-facing crit areas, and the Static Charge chains will crit them quite often. In the gameplay video above, you'll hear lots of Hollowpoint explosions when punching those creatures, because the Static Charge is killing them with crits. Let's talk about that: Hollowpoints while meleeing. In case it hasn't dawned on you, this is effectively a way to punch for billions of damage. Not only will a Hollowpoint clear out enemies around the kill (hence why the Area of Effect passive is recommended on the Static Charge), but they will give you enormous Groundbreaker damage going into your next punch. Your Groundbreaker damage will be above damage cap. And that's not all... Going further into the rabbit hole, an ASE 50% bonus element's damage source is "bullet". What does that mean? Well, if you melee with, for example, a Re-Volter or Urad bonus element, those bonus elements will get mayhem scaling along with the melee attack. Same goes with action skills: your Phasecast, for example, gets 200% bonus shock damage from Re-Volter because the bonus element gets the same action skill mayhem scaling. This is because the damage source of those bonus elements (along with the Terror Cryo bonus element) matches whatever attack they go along with. This is not the case for ASE 50% bonus elements on grenades and shields. Their damage source is always "bullet". If you attach one of these bonus elements to your melee or action skill, it'll be 16x or 31x weaker, respectively. There is no mayhem scaling for bullets. However, Groundbreaker, which can be accumulated through mayhem scaled attacks, is not itself mayhem scaled. Therefore, ASE 50% bonus elements properly add their 50% damage to Groundbreaker. Why does this matter? Because bullets can crit. If you have an ASE 50% bonus element active and you punch a crit spot, the bonus element will crit. Let's say you have, for example, 10 million Groundbreaker damage build up. This is very easy to do between Ties That Bind and Static Charge and even your guns if you're shooting things. An ASE 50% bonus element adds 5 million damage to that Groundbreaker. Now imagine, with that damage stored, you punched a crit spot while holding an Unforgiven and with Transcend procced. That 5 million turns into 67 million . We're already in crazy territory here, but now you need to realize that this enormous ASE 50% critting is likely going to kill the enemy, proccing Hollowpoint directly on the enemy you're punching. If there were any other mobs in range, they're gone now, and you have billions of Groundbreaker damage stored for your next punch. Yeah. So the Unforgiven is not only for your Static Charge chains, but also for your punches directly. This is why, vs the creatures in the gameplay video, you see me grasp an enemy but punch a linked enemy on the ground, instead of the grasped enemy. It's much easier to hit that crit spot when the enemy is on the ground facing you. NOTES - IONIC DISRUPTOR But wait, there's more! There's a special effect of the Ionic Disruptor where if you melee an enemy with it, that enemy will have a shock dot applied to them, and while it's applied the Disruptor's bullets deal more damage to that enemy. As you might guess, there's more going on under the hood here. Firstly, if you're holding the disruptor, it converts your melee damage to shock damage, even if you have Illuminated Fist and your action skill element set to something else. Even if you throw a corrosive Fish Slap, it will get converted to shock damage on impact while holding the Disruptor. (This is sort of a way to get around immune Heavies in the Maliwan Takedown - if you're punching with fire and come up against a fire immune heavy, you can swap to the disruptor and your punch will now be shock without changing your action skill element.) Secondly, the shock dot that gets applied by a Disruptor melee is not a normal dot. It is also a bullet. Yes, that's right, you're not going insane; every dot tick is a bullet instance. And funnily enough, it does bullet things like heal you through Sustainment and travel through Ties That Bind links. Every dot tick does those things. It's why you can storm the Maliwan Takedown bridge while true-meleeing with the disruptor: you apply dots and constantly heal from them as you move around. It's why in the gameplay video you see me punch an enemy with it, Phasegrasp one of them, and then see every enemy linked by Ties just melt. It's crazy. This is the recommended weapon to hold against Guardians in the Guardian Takedown. But you can do it pretty much anywhere. Just make sure your action skill element is also set to shock, so your Driver self-dot, and therefore Elemental Projector, are there to boost your punch. NOTES - GUARDIAN ANGEL Now it's time to have some fun. The Guardian Angel is a great gun for this build. First, it will increase the damage of your Static Charge chains, making them more likely to kill enemies and give you more Groundbreaker damage for your next punch. Second, it can be shot at enemies to build up lots of Groundbreaker damage that way. This gun's projectiles double dip Indiscriminate, so when you shoot an enemy and those bullets ricochet around, you're going to get Groundbreaker damage for your next punch. Those ricocheted bullets will also do plenty of killing all by themselves, especially with a good amount of damage from Spiritual Driver. It's fun to shoot as you're running and approaching enemies; if the bullets themselves didn't kill anything, your punch certainly will. Bonus points for when this high-projectile-count shotgun launches enemies away. Third, it can come with both a 60% bonus melee damage attachment and extra crit damage bonuses. NOTES - GUARDIAN RANK Disable Shield Reboot and Emergency Response, so that your Ward remains depleted as long as possible. NOTES - MAYHEM 10/11 You must play on Mayhem 11 with this build, even though I usually recommend Mayhem 10 and the Speed Demon modifier for true melee builds. The problem with Mayhem 10 on this build is that the only very hard modifier that doesn't completely kill the build is Not The Face, and that modifier ruins our critical hit interactions. You get enough movement speed with the Driver and Mindfulness anyway.

General advice for playing Amara and succeeding at endgame. General Advice KNOW YOUR BUILD It's unwise to jump into an activity without first understanding all of the moving parts of your build. It can mean the difference between smooth sailing and getting downed and frustrated and dying. It's why I'm so stupidly long-winded in the build writeups. Even when I choose a build of my own to play, I still open up my inventory and skill tree to make sure I'm approaching the content correctly. ELEMENTAL ATTUNEMENT Something that people new to Amara may not be accustomed to, but you need to have your action skill element appropriately set for the content you're facing. This may mean, for example, switching to shock before going down the elevator to fight the valks, and then later switching to corrosive when you fight them individually. Yes, it's tedious, but Mayhem 10/11 can be tough, and having a favorable elemental matchup vs an unfavorable one can, in extreme cases, mean you more than triple your damage. Amara's action skill element affects such things as Infusion on your gun, Illuminated Fist for your true melee element, Forceful Expression's element, the type of damage that Ties That Bind shares, and all of her other action skills. There are a few exceptions to switching elements, of course, such as cryo-focused builds or certain Spiritual Driver builds. AVOID BARRELS Barrels are an extremely frustrating part of the game, and they're ubiquitous. They are basically an instant down, and because Amara has lots of challenges in FFYL , they can ruin your day. Either look for barrels ahead of time and detonate them safely, or know where they are and avoid them. When I do the Slaughter maps, I blow up all of the barrels between each round before starting the next. AVOID WATER Water transfers elemental effects, making you damage yourself if you're in that water. Operating a slam build, for example, in a puddle results in you downing yourself every slam. Punching in water with Body & Mind active will down you. In general, just stay out of water and puddles entirely as best as you can. KEEP TRACK OF YOUR ANOINTMENTS Many anointments, such as bonus elements on grenade and shield and the Killstack anointment, aren't active at the beginning of fights. You may have to go through a full action skill cycle and start killing enemies before all of your buffs are active and your damage is rolling. Inactive bonus elements can be very apparent in dot-focused builds. KNOW YOUR ENEMY Understand what your high priority targets are. Jetpack troopers and snipers in general can instantly healthgate you; if you see a red laser trained on you, that's an enemy that needs to be killed, stunned, or line of sight broken from. Badass Maliwan Troopers and Wardogs deal relentless amounts of damage. Goliaths can deal constant, debilitating damage, but can be easily defused by shooting their helmet off. Shock Maliwan Heavies or Nullhounds can easily ruin a Deathless build, or make your Infernal Wish completely useless. Flying Sera Guardians tracking you with a powerful laser attack can be a big problem during the crystal phases of the Guardian Takedown. COMBAT TACTICS There are often instances where you can't kill a dangerous enemy immediately; waiting to finish a reload, for your projectile to hit, for your cooldown to finish, or for you to close the distance can result in you going down. Here are a few tactics you can use to stall or prevent an enemy's attack while you get a handle on the situation: 1. Critting the enemy: shoot an enemy's crit spot, and most of them will stagger. Even Wotan staggers when you crit him. This effect has a cooldown, of course, so you can't stunlock enemies by critting. 2. Melee the enemy: melee damage, in a similar way to critting, will also stagger an enemy. Meleeing and critting are on separate timers, so you can make use of both tactics in immediate succession. Note that melee in this instance counts for any kind of melee: punching, Face Puncher, Fish Slap, etc. 3. Grenade toss: the effectiveness of this tactic varies with enemy type, but some enemies will dive for cover if you throw a grenade at or near them. COV enemies have the most obvious response to this. Others may just side step briefly. This was a tactic I used often in my original true melee build ; I would throw the Fastball at an enemy while I approached them, giving me time to close the distance while also dealing significant damage to them. 4. Other physics interactions: the Safe Space shield part, Quasar grenade, and high pellet-count shotguns can all toss enemies around. I often recommend a Quasar (Hyperion, non-sticky) in my builds specifically for this sort of aggro-relief. The Safe Space part can even toss around the otherwise almost physics-immune guardians in the True Guardian Takedown. 5. Take cover or dodge: yes, the age-old trick of hiding behind something or moving away from danger. If you just need to reload or wait for your cooldown, sometimes this option is the simplest. All too often I see someone trying something off-meta, they attempt to face-tank whatever content, the build doesn't absolutely destroy everything with a button press, they get downed, they die, and they declare said off-meta thing not viable. If you play intelligently, you'll have much, much more game available to you.

Revelation and Face Puncher build, in honor of one of the greatest builds of all time. Lame Faker Amara SYNOPSIS Revelation and Face Puncher build, in honor of one of the greatest builds of all time. INTRO Moxsy's Game Breaker Amara used to be a crazy build where Amara would grasp enemies with Ties That Bind and every enemy within the linkage would instantly vaporize. This was mostly due to the fact that the damage from the Revelation augment would transfer through the Ties links. After the enemies were vaporized, you could redirect all of that damage with a Face Puncher through Groundbreaker at anyone unlucky enough to still be around. The build was nerfed in many ways, and basically no longer exists. This build seeks to emulate that playstyle (relatively poorly, considering the strength of the original). It's not a Game Breaker Amara, it's a Lame Faker Amara. Still, it can clear all content without too much trouble. Instead of Revelation damage traveling along Ties That Bind, you're just going to have it hit enemies directly with splash radius increases. If it doesn't kill anything, the next best thing is for it to freeze your grasped enemy. Then you can direct melee or Unweave The Rainbow damage at the frozen enemy to finish them off. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES The skills you are focused on here are ones that boost melee and action skill damage. 3 points are also given to Indiscriminate, which will be explained later. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Always cryo, except against Wotan, for whom you switch to corrosive. With plenty of Do Harm stacks, a cryo Revelation nova will freeze most things, if it doesn't kill them. GUN 1 Guardian Angel, with Urad anointment. The Guardian Angel damage bonus and the Urad bonus element will apply to the Revelation nova. This is the most effective way to increase its damage. GUN 2 Face Puncher, preferably x7 pellets, with Urad anointment. This is for delivering the Groundbreaker damage accrued by Revelation, as well as finishing off a grasped enemy and any enemies still linked. The Urad bonus element will also apply to Groundbreaker. CLASS MOD Phasezerker. Skills do not matter. The most important part is having a Splash Damage Radius passive on it, so that your Revelation nova can hit more things. Other recommended passives: splash damage, action skill damage, melee damage, action skill cooldown rate. SHIELD Re-Volter with Action Skill Start anointment. The shock bonus element will also increase Revelation damage as well as apply to Groundbreaker. ARTIFACT Cryo Stone Deathless. The Cryo Stone is for freezing enemies with the Face Puncher. The most important part is having an Area of Effect passive in the 2nd or 3rd slot, because then it will increase the radius of your Revelation. Other recommended passives: action skill cooldown rate, melee damage, cryo damage, cryo efficiency. GRENADE Fish Slap in various elements, with ASE 50% Cryo damage anointment. This anointment will apply to Groundbreaker. Revelation isn't really strong enough for bossing, unfortunately, and neither is the Face Puncher in this loadout. The Fish Slap picks up the slack. GAMEPLAY LOOP You can actually Fakegrasp to build up Do Harm stacks, if you so desire, but you can also just jump into the action. Stand far away to get a greater Guardian Angel bonus and use your grasp as often as possible to keep your stacks up. The lifted enemy will get hit with the Revelation nova, and hopefully it also hit some linked enemies. With lots of Do Harm, and assuming the enemies are not too tanky, everything should basically die instantly. Swap to your Face Puncher and fire at whatever else is around to deliver Groundbreaker damage. If the grasped enemy is still alive, hopefully they are frozen. Frozen enemies take 300% damage from melee. You will also get bonus damage from Unweave the Rainbow. This also means you can simply not swap and shoot the Guardian Angel at the frozen enemy; the Guardian Angel does splash damage and will also get Unweave bonus damage. It will further annihilate anything still linked through Ties That Bind. The Guardian Angel projectiles will also Indisriminate, further decimating enemies and giving you even more Groundbreaker damage should you want to swap to your Face Puncher. If the grasped enemy is still alive and not frozen, simply try and whittle them down with your Face Puncher. Your Cryo Stone's damage will hopefully freeze them, allowing for an easy finish. Beware, this is a Deathless build, and going into FFYL will make you lose Do Harm stacks. When you get back up, you will need to rebuild your stacks through continuous action skill usage. Generally, stay as far away from enemies as possible. For bosses, hold the Guardian Angel, grasp, and throw a Fish. That should take care of it.

A very strong true melee build that offers lots of interesting gear and bossing strategies. Steel Swan SYNOP SIS A very strong true melee build that offers lots of interesting gear and bossing strategies. INTRO I've always wanted a true melee build that capped both green and purple trees. But that leaves too few points for Sustainment in red tree. For a long time I believed that a true melee build without Sustainment was simply not feasible. In places like True Maliwan Takedown, incoming damage is very heavy. Closing in on enemies and applying damage fast enough to eliminate the threat often results in repeated FFYL, eventually becoming too much to survive. Usually, melee builds without Sustainment shortcut these situations by heavy use of the Face Puncher, Blade Fury, and/or Fish Slap. Maybe also with Phaseflare. But I was wrong. Here we have: true melee, green and purple trees capped, and as few shortcuts in general gameplay as possible. As a bonus, this build also has diverse gear options. And to tackle bossing, up to SEVEN different strategies can be employed. It's as strong and versatile as steel. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES This is a slightly unconventional green skill tree. Max health isn't often taken. But it is effectively always-on damage reduction and I like the resistance One With Nature provides. You can choose to place the 12 points that are in Root to Rise, Arms Deal, and One With Nature in whichever tank skills you want. ACTION SKILL Phaseslam. It's great for Find Your Center uptime, damage, and enemy staggering. Fracture can be used if you're good at aiming it. A variant of Phaseflare can be used to take out a big boss. Base Phasegrasp is used strictly for when you want to White Elephant punch a True Trials boss or Seer. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whichever element best suits the enemies you're facing, except cryo. Do not choose cryo. MAIN GUNS The guns in this loadout all have different purposes. Let's list these in an order that matches your typical gameplay loop: Face Puncher with Melee Apply Terror anoint. This is a gun you swap to only to apply terror to yourself, or sometimes to take out flying enemies with Body & Mind. You will also kill some non-flying enemies with Body & Mind when getting terror stacks for yourself. Only shoot enough to get full terror stacks. Then swap to... Low level Sellout with Melee Apply Terror anoint. This gun is mainly for dotting yourself with corrosive damage. So make sure it's always switched to corrosive, unless your action skill element is corrosive, in which case switch the Sellout to fire. When self-dotted, and when you have a bonus element active, Burn Both Ends will stack up for you. Corrosive gives a longer dot than fire, which means longer BBE uptime. But when your action skill element is corrosive, you'll get a corrosive dot through Infusion, so switch the Sellout to fire so you get two dots, which stacks up Mindfulness faster. To get an anointed low level Sellout, discard the one you get as a mission reward, and go find an anointed one in Earl's Vendor. Psycho Stabber with Terror Cryo anointment. Your main punching gun and what you swap to after dotting yourself with the Sellout. Now that you've applied terror to yourself and have a dot going, the Terror Cryo anoint on this gun will start stacking Burn Both Ends. ADDITIONAL / OPTIONAL GUNS Guardian Angel with Terror Cryo anointment. Hold this if you want your Phaseslam to do more damage. It can also be held for punching to buff your Static Charge or White Elephant. It will also add damage to the Muse orb. Face Puncher with Terror Cryo anointment. See "Notes - Bossing Strategies" below. Zheitsev's Eruption with Terror Cryo anointment. This is for debuffing bosses. See "Notes - Bossing Strategies" below. Ionic Disruptor with Terror Cryo anointment. Swap to this to change your punch to shock damage, if it's set to fire or corrosive and you come up against a fire- or corrosive-immune heavy. But there are other ways of dealing with an immune heavy, such as Static Charge from another enemy, your Elemental Stone, or Groundbreaker. CLASS MOD The best for general punching is going to be the Muse, ideally with +1 Illuminated Fist and +3 Laid Bare, but any skill distribution will be helpful. The orb from the Muse hits hard if you're holding the Guardian Angel. The orb also likes to crit, which can lead to massive Hollowpoint and Groundbreaker damage. But this build can use many class mods. Breaker can be used for extra melee damage, Jab Cross points to buff your Phaseslam, and some damage reduction. Golden Rule can turn the build into a more action skill-oriented build. Dragon can give you access to Remnant, buff your Slam with Do Harm, and give you a little extra augment activation. Driver can be used, which, if you're using corrosive action skill element, allows you to skip self-dotting via the Sellout. Recommended passives on all of these: action skill damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, melee damage. Survivability passives like elemental resistance and health regen aren't terrible. SHIELD Again, there are a lot of options, all with the Terror Health Regen anointment. This anointment makes the build possible, and allows us to more comfortably skip Sustainment. At full terror stacks, it's 8% max health regen per second. It may not sound like much, but coupled with our other tank skills, it's very strong. As for the shield itself, the quintessential punching one would be a Brawler Ward. Re-Volter is also very strong for punching and buffing your Phaseslam damage. A double-roid Plus Ultra is great for survivability, as is a Beskar with a reflect part in bullet-heavy areas (like Maliwan Takedown bridge). For some damage at a distance and more Groundbreaker, a Messy Breakup is helpful, especially if you're holding the Guardian Angel while punching. The Shooting Star works great in the maps that allow it, or any map if you use a hotfix mod. ARTIFACT Some more options. The typical loadout uses an Elemental Stone Static Charge. The element of the stone should compliment your action skill element, and be suited to the enemies you are facing. The Static Charge will be the most consistent for mobbing and for bosses that have lots of adds. An Elemental Stone White Elephant can be used for mobbing as well. And if you want to punch down a raid boss, it is necessary. See "Notes - Bossing Strategies" below. A Spark Plug Static Charge or White Elephant is also a great artifact for this build. The Spark Plug will provide extra damage and crowd control (when it crit-staggers enemies), build damage for Groundbreaker, and allow you to skip the Face Puncher with Melee Apply Terror. Instead, you would only swap back to your Sellout, slam near enemies, and then shoot your foot to dot yourself. The Spark Plug chains will trigger the Melee Apply Terror anointment on the Sellout. Recommended passives for all of these: action skill cooldown, melee damage, movement speed, area-of-effect damage in the second or third slot, elemental damage. Just like with class mods, survivability passives like elemental resistance and health regen aren't terrible. GRENADE Do the options never stop?? A Mesmer for crowd control (great for Maliwan Takedown), a Hyperion Quasar (non-sticky) for the same reason, or a Fish Slap for damage. All with the Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. GAMEPLAY LOOP There are several things you always need to keep in mind when setting up. 1. How are you getting terror stacks? It's either with the Face Puncher or with the Spark Plug. Make sure, if you're using the Spark Plug, that you actually get full stacks before swapping away from your Melee Apply Terror anointment. Full stacks come nearly instantly when there's at least a few enemies around. But when there's only a lone enemy, it may take a few seconds. Having terror applied to yourself is an enormous boost to your damage and survivability. 2. How are you dotting yourself? Having a self-dot is a necessary step to getting your Burn Both Ends damage. Usually it's with the Sellout. You can also use the Spiritual Driver, but only if you're in an area where you can set your action skill element to corrosive, because you need that long corrosive dot. 3. Is your Sellout set to corrosive? And if your action skill element is corrosive, is it set to fire? This is a seemingly small optimization, but it's important. Being self-dotted means having lots of BBE damage. And getting more Mindfulness stacks sooner means better movement, which means better survivability. 4. Is your Shield Reboot Guardian Rank perk set appropriately for the shield you have selected? Some shields you want to remain depleted: Brawler Ward, roid Plus Ultra, Shooting Star. For those, disable Shield Reboot. Keep it enabled for the other shields: Re-Volter, Messy Breakup, Beskar. The Re-Volter and Messy Breakup don't need to fully recharge to proc again, so Shield Reboot will give you a little bit of shields whenever you kill an enemy, and when that little bit of shields is quickly depleted again, you get another proc. 5. Is your action skill element set appropriately? This determines the base element of your punch, the Muse orb element (if you're using the Muse), and your Phaseslam damage. 6. Have you chosen an appropriate element for your Elemental Stone? Once you've figured all of that out, you're ready to go. Get your Terror, dot yourself, and attack. Keep swapping around as necessary to keep up terror and your self-dot. Once you've figured out a loadout you like, you won't have to worry as much about all of the above questions. But perhaps the most important rule of all: Be Careful! This is still a true melee build without Sustainment. In dangerous places like the Maliwan takedown, you need to be very mindful of what you're walking into. Always be ready to back off and use cover. Doing so also offers you an opportunity to re-up your terror and self-dot. NOTES - BOSSING STRATEGIES When I'm piloting a true melee build, I usually dread figuring out what to do when it comes to bossing. This build keeps it very interesting by giving you so many options: 1. Equip Spark Plug Static Charge, Messy Breakup, and hold the Guardian Angel. Let your damage work from a distance, and occasionally get close to slam another Spark Plug and apply Groundbreaker. 2. Equip a Dragon class mod with a point into Remnant, and then Phaseslam an add. Let Remnant take out the boss. Note: Remnant targets the closest enemy to you, so make sure that's the boss. 3. Phaseflare. Do your normal setup: apply terror and self-dot. Then summon Phaseflare (or the Shooting Star variant). Recall and punch it once while holding the Psychostabber. When it reaches the boss, swap to the Guardian Angel. Watch boss health bar go away. 4. Body & Mind. This is what the Face Puncher with Terror Cryo is for. Again, get your terror stacks and self-dot. Additionally, make sure you have an enemy to kill to activate Body & Mind. Swap to your Terror Cryo Face Puncher and kill that enemy. If you want extra damage, quickly swap to your broken Zheitsev's Eruption to debuff the boss. Then shoot the boss with your Terror Cryo Face Puncher. 5. Punching. This strategy is taken from Sulphur Swan . First, have an Elemental Stone White Elephant equipped. Get your terror stacks, dot yourself, apply the Zheitsev's Eruption debuff, then swap to your Guardian Angel and punch. If a White Elephant sticky got applied, back up and watch it go off. For maximum punching damage, use a +3 Laid Bare Muse and, while your Zheitsev's Eruption is out, use base Phasegrasp to apply Laid Bare to boss, just before swapping to the Guardian Angel to punch. 6. Fish Slap. Pretty self explanatory. Hold the Guardian Angel and have an Elemental Stone Static Charge or White Elephant and chuck a fish. 7. Shooting Star shield. Similar to the Body & Mind Face Puncher strat, only you don't need to kill an enemy. Instead, make sure your shield is depleted (and that the Shooting Star works on the map you're in). Get your terror, self-dot, swap to Terror Cryo Face Puncher, and shoot away. Watch the fireworks. NOTES - MEME BUILD ORIGIN Funnily enough, this build has its origins as an action skill-less build. You technically don't need to use an action skill. All anoints are triggered by Melee Apply Terror. The only thing you miss out on is proccing Find Your Center and stacking Samsara. But you can punch without Find Your Center (not that it's any fun to do so). And Samsara points can be moved into other tank skills like Helping Hands. And I suppose you won't get Laid Bare if you're trying to get extra damage when punching a raid boss. Point being, you can use any action skill you want, or no action skill. You could use Downfall. You can use any augment you want, including Glamour. That's sort of the theme of this build - you get to build it your favorite way!

A spicy Spiritual Driver gun dot build that rewards accuracy via the Elemental Crit anointment. Amara Dot Crit SYNOPSIS A spicy Spiritual Driver gun dot build that rewards accuracy via the Elemental Crit anointment. INTRO The anointment, "Elemental critical hits can cause status effects of that element to explode..." (EleCrit) has been a favorite of mine for a long time. It's most common usage is on a gun you swap to to detonate a status effect (dot) applied by Fish Slap/UTD or a strong, one-shotting gun like the Kickcharger. But I've always wanted to find a way to use it as a main gun anointment. I've, also, always wanted to make a gun dot build with the Spiritual Driver. This build accomplishes both. As a cool side effect, it allows usage of some really underused and otherwise weak guns. Inspiration to try working with the EleCrit anointment came from Ancient Rune's Alchemical Agent Zane dot build. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Yep, no capstones. The EleCrit nova is based on the strength of the dot you apply, and then it gets its own damage formula. This is a form of double dipping. Therefore, we need to grab damage boosts in our skill tree that will apply to both your initial dot and the EleCrit nova: Tempest, Laid Bare, Burn Both Ends. Just for fun, let's follow the rest of the logic for creating this skill tree. Because this is a Driver build, we also want points into Mindfulness. And we also need to spec Sustainment for survivability. We need Sustainment because other forms of healing won't work here: Samsara doesn't apply to Ties That Bind, Ebb & Flow is for melee builds (although we take it here because sometimes you punch for Groundbreaker and we need to dump some skill points somewhere to reach Burn Both Ends), and Clarity is not enough on its own. We choose Ties That Bind as our action skill because it has a much shorter cooldown than a Phasecast or Slam action skill. A shorter cooldown matters because the Driver self-dot will deactivate Topped Off, making us lose a lot of action skill cooldown rate. Cast/slam also won't be able to help us with their huge gun damage anointments, because we're using the EleCrit anoint. Ties can also give us lots of Expedite stacks, further facilitating its cooldown. Following the chain of logic back, we need Sustainment because we're using Ties because we're using Driver. We've chosen our action skill and the end points of each of our four trees. The rest of the skill points cover regular gun benefits, dot skills, and some splash for the EleCrit nova. This is one of the few builds that could actually use more skill points: 1 more for Burn Both Ends and 1 more for Mindfulness. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. For some boss fights, base Phasegrasp can be used for faster action skill cycling - it has a shorter cooldown and no duration when grasping a target that cannot be lifted. Hemo is a good fight for base Phasegrasp. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Fire, shock, or corrosive. Whichever one matches your fire, shock, or corrosive gun. No cryo, because this is a Driver (and dot) build. GUNS Anything with at least a decent damage over time stat, with the EleCrit anointment. I'd say around 50K-ish status effect damage per second or greater. We get to use quite a few overlooked weapons here. My favorites: Hellfire, Fearmonger, Recursion, Free Radical, Plasma Coil, Beacon, Hellshock, Kyb's Worth, Trevonator, Chandelier, Slow Hand, Soulrender, Insider, Satisfaction, Back Burner, Plaguebearer, Hive, King's/Queen's Call, Unkempt Harold, and Boogeyman. I've also had minor success with the Convergence and the Flipper. There might even be some non-unique purple weapons with acceptable dot values. Note, though, that a max damage per-pellet version of a gun may not have the max status effect damage. You want the version of every gun that has the highest status effect damage. You also want the version of a gun that has the fewest projectiles per shot, if it has such variants. The lower the pellet count, the higher the status effect damage. UTILITY GUN Guardian Angel, with EleCrit anointment. Its usage here is like the typical usage of the EleCrit anointment: apply a dot with your guns, then swap to the Guardian Angel and detonate the dot with a grenade (that can crit) of the same element as the dot. This gun can also be shot in FFYL, and if there's multiple enemies around, there's a good chance it'll get you back up via an Indiscriminate projectile. CLASS MOD Spiritual Driver, with as many points into Mindfulness as possible. Phasezerker usually overshadows the Driver when building for gun dots; it can get you up to 10 Anima and it applies dots more reliably through better Violent Tapestry stacking. However, there's still a reason to use Driver for dots: moving fast gives you a lot of gun damage, and dots from your guns are strengthened if you have more gun damage. To make up for less reliable dots, you simply shoot your gun more. This results in a go-fast-pew-pew-style dot build, as opposed to Amara Dot Gun , which is a methodical, single-shot dot build. Recommended passives: splash damage radius, splash damage, action skill cooldown rate, mag size, weapon charge speed, weapon damage, weapon critical damage. Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time. SHIELD Re-Volter, with Action Skill Start anointment. The fire rate from this shield is great all on its own, but also because it will give you more stacks of the Guardian Rank perk C-C-Combo, which is a damage increase that will double dip with the EleCrit novas. Also, the shock damage will give you a shock dot at 200% power - which is all-around great. If you're using a shock weapon, your EleCrit will detonate based on that stronger dot from the Re-Volter. ARTIFACT Elemental Projector Victory Rush. The Elemental Projector is the more important part. But both parts of this artifact will provide damage boosts that the EleCrit nova can double dip. Recommended passives: action skill cooldown, movement speed, AoE damage, fire/shock/corrosive damage. GRENADE Hex, Lightspeed, or Hunter-Seeker, with ASE 50% bonus radiation damage anointment. All three of these grenades can crit, and therefore can proc the EleCrit anointment on your gun. Because this is a dot build, adding a radiation bonus element will create and strengthen radsplosions and overall spread a lot of damage around. GAMEPLAY LOOP Your Re-Volter will cover shock, and your grenade anoint will cover radiation. So your guns will mostly be fire or corrosive, depending on the base health of the enemies you're facing. Shock can be used for Guardians in the Guardian Takedown or just in general with a very high shock dot weapon like the Plasma Coil or Free Radical. Choose the element of your gun to suit the content you're facing, and grasp and shoot and aim for crits. Believe it or not, this build can be very forgiving if you don't have good aim. Dots are not increased by landing a critical hit. So you can do a drive-by at high speed with your Driver and land some body shots just to apply a large dot (remember dots are increased by gun damage), and then stop and carefully hit a crit to proc EleCrit. If you can hit crits at high speed, all the better. If the enemy doesn't have an easily accessible crit spot, don't fret: this is a Driver build. It's still going to have good damage simply by moving fast and shooting a strong gun. The EleCrit anoint has a cooldown. However, the cooldown is reset if you swap to a different gun. A fun way to play this build is to have 2-4 guns of the same element and rapid-fire swap between them, getting an EleCrit with each before moving on to the next one. Weapons with charge times slow this strategy down a little bit, so choose your guns wisely. NOTES - IMMUNE MALIWAN HEAVIES When facing a Maliwan Heavy that's immune to your gun's element, your damage will drop significantly (and you won't lifesteal). The solution here is to use a radiation Hex. Your main gun element won't do any damage, but the radiation dot created by the bonus element anoint on the Hex will still get applied. Then the Hex can be thrown and used to proc EleCrit in radiation. The Hex will also keep your lifesteal going. NOTES - ALTERNATIVE BOSSING STRATEGY Similar to the strategy above regarding Maliwan Heavies, and alluded to throughout this guide, an alternate strategy to shooting and getting crits is to apply your gun's dot at high speed, then swap to the Guardian Angel and proc EleCrit with a grenade that element-matches the dot that you applied. See the Hemo fight in the gameplay video.

Slam build based on the Ice Spiker artifact. It's much stronger than you probably think. Icicle Amara SYNOPSIS Slam build based on the Ice Spiker artifact. It's much stronger than you probably think. INTRO It was the summer of 2020 when I noticed that if you had a Nimbus class mod equipped, you fake-grasped, and then slammed an Ice Spiker projectile into an enemy, the Ice Spike would proc the Nimbus cloud. It wasn't until later that year that I figured out why: Ice Spiker is basically another Amara action skill. The Ice Spikes get action skill damage, proc Samsara, proc Laid Bare, proc Expedite with a kill, and even refund half the rush stacks consumed by your latest action skill usage if they get a kill (see Avatar). And of course, they proc the Nimbus cloud. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE ACTION SKILL You can actually use any action skill available to you. But the best are: Tandava, Reverberation, Phaseslam, Eternal Fist, Shooting Star, Light Fantastic. That's most of them. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT You can get away with cryo in nearly every situation, even vs Wotan depending on your loadout. But just to be safe: always cryo except element match a boss. MAIN GUNS Guardian Angels, one with Terror Cryo anointment and the other with Urad anointment. This build can play either way. BACKUP / UTILITY / FFYL GUNS Face Punchers for delivering Groundbreaker or using with Body & Mind to take out elevated/flying enemies. With Terror Cryo and Urad anointments. FFYL weapons such as Ember's Purge, Free Radical, Backburner, Plasma Coil are recommended in case Body & Mind isn't active while you are down. Same anointments as above, or with Consecutive Hits. A Crader's EMP-5 is nice for getting around. CLASS MOD Stone, with Do Harm and Awakening points. Awakening points will buff the damage reduction on the com, as well as the effectiveness of both Do Harm and Violent Tapestry, two very important skills for this build. Recommended passives: splash damage radius, splash damage, action skill damage, action skill cooldown rate. A well-rolled Stone is more effective than the Phasezerker for action skill damage, and its damage reduction is very good. These two perks are what enable the usage of a wide variety of action skills. SHIELD You've got 2 options, depending on if you're using Terror Cryo or Urad. First is a Mana Well with ASE Apply Terror anoint, for use with Terror Cryo. Slamming with this shield (when it has any capacity) will give you a 100% shock bonus element and 90% true damage reduction. Second is Beskar with a Reflect part and with ASE Apply Terror anoint (see "Notes - Beskar" section below), for use with Urad. This shield is also insanely defensive. ARTIFACT Ice Spiker Otto Idol (for use with Terror Cryo) and Ice Spiker Deathless (for use with Urad). The most important passive is Area of Effect in the 2nd or 3rd slot, which also grants increased area radius. Other recommended passives: cryo damage, action skill cooldown rate, movement speed, radiation damage (on the Deathless). If you want even more tank, use the Safeguard suffix (when using Terror Cryo). Ice Spiker can be swapped out for Snowdrift if you just want to use your action skills during a boss fight. GRENADE Hyperion Quasars (non sticky) with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate and Phasegrasp Terror Skulls. The Terror Skulls are for when you want to use Eternal Fist (see "Notes - Terror Skulls" section below). GAMEPLAY LOOP Activate your action skill of choice and slam away. It takes a little bit to get the hang of the Ice Spiker projectiles. They travel through enemies, and up around over most terrain obstacles. For example, you can hit an enemy who is hiding behind a box by simply slamming directly at them; the spikes will travel straight over the box and hit them on the other side. If you slam close enough, you can get all three projectiles to hit. However, you'll have a bit more damage if you're further away and let the Guardian Angel add its damage bonus. Cryo immune Maliwan heavies are usually not a problem, because you have a non-cryo bonus element with either the Mana Well or Urad. Because this build uses the strongest defense-oriented items in the game (Stone, Beskar, Mana Well), you can basically go wild in dangerous places like the Maliwan Takedown bridge. But as always, be careful of barrels and water. NOTES - BESKAR The reflect ability on legendary shields still lets you take damage when a projectile is reflected. The Reflect part that appears on purple shields and some legendaries negates damage when the reflect chance rolls. When the Beskar rolls with a Reflect part, and you enter FFYL once and get a second wind, the Beskar's legendary reflect ability "breaks" and it takes on the properties of the Reflect part. Because the Beskar has a 100% reflect chance, after that point, it will reflect 100% of projectiles without letting them damage you. This does not negate all damage, however; indirect splash can still damage you, and if a projectile dots you, you will take that dot damage. NOTES - TERROR SKULLS Phasegrasp Terror Skulls will reproc and seek out a grasped enemy every time Eternal Fist lifts a new enemy. And the skulls are very powerful. There is the Terror Skulls anoint on a low level grenade with this save file, and the anoint notes the skulls having very low damage because of that. But the skulls actually deal damage based on the level of the gun you're holding. This setup is great for taking out airborne enemies while your Ice Spikes take care of everything on the ground. NOTES - BONUS LOADOUT You can also use a Re-Volter shield with Action Skill Start for a bit more damage. But this is a risky playstyle, especially if using a Phaseflare action skill. Pair with a grenade with either ASE 50% corrosive bonus element (if using Urad) or ASE Apply Terror (if using Terror Cryo). NOTES - RAID BOSSING While the Hemovorous fight can be very hectic and dangerous, it's rather easy for this slam build. Go Terror Cryo, Mana Well, and Shooting Star, and slam, slam, slam. Shooting Star can even get strong enough on this build to melt True Hag of Fervor.